


Red Hills

by ghostlyscribbles



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types, Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Gen, Gore, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Monsters, Nightmare Fuel, Psychological Horror, Violence, dark themes, typical silent hill horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-07-26 04:21:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7559914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostlyscribbles/pseuds/ghostlyscribbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He only wanted to find his soldiers. He didn't want to deal with all of these monsters and this dumb strange fog. He definitely didn't want to admit that this place freaked him out. It wasn't just that he was scared, either. He may be in way over his head with this one.</p><p>(A Silent Hill AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fitting, to go crazy in a mental hospital

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by CyprinTheFabulousDragon (she doesn't write Eddsworld). Inspired by noenee's PT AU on tumblr.
> 
> This is my first Eddsworld fic that I've ever posted, along with the first fic that I've posted in a long time. I hope I did well enough to catch your interest.

Slowly, Tord began to realize what was around him as he came back to awareness. His ears were still ringing from the screeching of the tires, and his  _ everything _ ached. He was still strapped in, seat belt and all, to the back seat of the car. The belt itself was adding to the annoying constant soreness as it dug into his torso, keeping him tied to his seat despite the car being flipped onto its roof.  The front doors were open, meaning his companions had left him all alone for some reason.

He unbuckled the seat belt and, after falling somewhat ungracefully from his seat, climbed out of the vehicle. He cursed under his breath, wondering why he even trusted Paul behind the wheel of  _ anything  _ since his track record was terrible. He dropped the train of thought when he stood and looked around. They’d rolled off of the street and into some woods, apparently, as there was nothing but tall trees around him and leaves underneath his feet.

He was glad that he had gotten a new red hoodie to wear a while back, though a chill still sank into his bones. A thick fog covered the entire area and he could hardly make out the trees a little ways away from him. As he started walking, following a trail of messed up leaves (it looked like something was dragged through them, so maybe Paul or Patryk were injured?), he wondered if he’d ever seen fog like this before.

The trees were seemingly endless, as was the trail. He would’ve called out for his companions, but something held him back from speaking. A feeling of uneasiness had settled in his chest that formed a lump in his throat. He felt that he was not alone in these woods, recognizing the strange paranoia - like eyes were watching his every move - and his hand slowly reached for his gun. It was the only one he had on him at the moment, as the rest were back in the car and he never felt the need to carry more than one weapon now a days. He was far too good of a shot and his companions almost always had his back, so why would he carry an excessive amount of guns? It just weighed him down.

After walking through the trees for what felt like forever - it probably wasn’t, since his legs didn’t hurt yet, but he hated long, boring walks - he finally found something different. A gravel trail formed out of the leaves, and that probably meant that  _ someone  _ was around. He followed the trail for a while and found that once the gravel turned into asphalt, he was surrounded by buildings. Mostly pharmacies and places that sold liquor, but they soon became apartment complexes and things like convenience stores.

What the hell kind of town did he just walk into? There were no people around, and the stores looked either closed or abandoned. Windows were cracked and shattered, as if someone had gone around and thrown bricks at them. Where  _ ever _ he was, it was a hellhole and he wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. He had a bad feeling about this place.

Only a moment later, when he was walking past a bar, did he spot some sort of dark liquid staining the streets. He groaned, rolling his eyes with a quiet mutter of, “ _ Great _ .” He’d been around long enough to recognize it, and he looked around for the source. It couldn’t have been from one of his companions, could it? The crash wasn’t  _ that  _ bad, and it was pretty far away... The blood formed a new trail for him to follow, and the thought that maybe it possibly was his companions pushed him to follow it.

The trail turned, confusedly. He looked down the street and saw a hospital not that far away, but the dark stuff - which, against the lighter sidewalk, stood out against the dull colors of the streets because it was  _ red -  _ led him away from where it probably should have gone and instead towards an alley. While he didn’t doubt that Paul and Patryk were idiotic enough to ignore the hospital and instead hide out in an alley, he  _ did  _ doubt them going into a fucking club.

Yes, inside the alley was a set of stairs, leading up into a door with a neon sign over it. The sign read, “Heaven’s Night”. Shrugging, he decided to look in this club. Just to be sure that his companions were not as stupid as it seemed.

The door swung open with an obnoxious creak. The room he stepped into was dark, the only light aside from the door came from another neon sign stating the club’s name and a small lamp behind the bar. In the bleak lighting, he could make out chairs flipped up onto the tables and a stage with a pole on it.

Oh shit, this was a  _ strip club.  _ What the fuck was this doing so close to the hospital?

He took a deep breath at the sight of someone sitting at the bar, slouched over. Their hoodie had an odd coloring to it - plum, he guessed - though if the color was because of the lighting or not, he wasn’t sure. There was something wet on the counter beside them, either a spilled drink or blood. The deep breath forced him to inhale some dust, and he began coughing in response. Why in the fuck was a strip club so dusty?

The person turned their head to look at him, and he took a step back in shock. Their eyes were like  _ voids _ , and just like a certain bastard who always wore blue, it didn’t really seem like he actually had anything in the sockets. The person hummed, spinning around in their chair to face him while at the same time, taking a long sip from a cup of whatever they had to drink. “Didn’t think I’d see anyone here, to be honest.” They muttered, voice deep and weirdly accented. “Well, other than those fucking weird things, anyway. Where’d you come from?”

Tord’s grip on his gun tightened out of habit, and he eyed the man cautiously. “Me and my  _ companions  _ crashed a little ways out of town. I came here to find them.” His voice was still rough from the dust-induced cough, and he cleared it as quietly as he could. 

The other man laughed, tipping back his head. His teeth were oddly sharp. “Well, I think you’re gonna have a hell of a time trying to find them, guy.” He kept smiling. “This place is crawling with monsters. I think you’d die before you actually found them.”

“Monsters?” Tord questioned, ignoring the assumption the other man had made. He was used to people thinking he was weak, after all. It came with his smaller stature.

The strange man stood up, still smiling. “I’m not going to ruin the surprise.” He claimed, shrugging and raising his hands in a nonchalant gesture. He then frowned, turning his head to the side and stuffing his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. “If you’re lookin’ for your friends after they were in a car crash, they’d probably be at the hospital on the other side of town.”   
  
“But there’s-”   
  
“Nah.” The man cut in sharply. “That’s a mental hospital. I think it’s called Brookhaven or something. The normal hospital is called Alchemilla, and it’s a long way away.” He sipped at his drink again, refusing to turn his head. “They’re either there, or somewhere else in this part of town. I’d bet my money on the latter, actually, since the other part of town was closed off.”

Tord processed this information, deciding that his first course of action would probably be checking the mental hospital. After all, it  _ was  _ still a hospital, and Paul and Patryk probably came to the same conclusion he did upon seeing it. Still, he was curious how much information he could get out of this man. “Why’d they close it off?”

The stranger made a noise similar to ‘psh’ and shrugged. “Why the fuck would I know? I don’t live here. You’d be better off asking someone who actually gave a shit.” He downed the rest of his drink and slammed it down on the bar with a loud  _ thunk.  _ “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got other places to be.” He strode past Tord, through the open door and down the stairs.

Tord waited until his footsteps faded away before wandering closer to the bar. The light chose that moment to conveniently go out, masking what was behind the bar from view, and the man in red rolled his eyes at this fact. Of course that would fucking happen. Of course. He did, however, spot a small flashlight sitting on the counter, and he grabbed it.

No batteries.  _ For fuck’s sake _ .

He still pocketed it, ignoring whatever was behind the bar. At least he had a somewhat decent plan of action other than following a trail... wait. He paused in his walk to the door, turning back to the bar. His eyes fell onto the empty glass the stranger had been using, mulling over his words a little more. Could he have been telling the truth?

No, that was stupid.  _ Monsters _ . Ha, it sounded so far fetched. It was entirely possible the man was drunk.

Tord left the club, descending the steps without much rush. They creaked underneath his weight and he wondered when the last time they were checked was. The club itself seemed fine, but the stairs were unsafe. He’d like to see the lawsuits that would come if they collapsed   _ I went out to a strip club and my leg broke! Pay me sixty million!  _ Pfft.

He continued his way down the street, ignoring the blood trail now and simply wandering down to the hospital. It was oddly silent, and he thought back to the stranger suggesting that there weren’t that many people around. What the hell was going on with this town?

He pushed open the heavy doors to the hospital, stepping in. They slammed shut behind him, and when he tried them out of curiosity, it seemed they were stuck. Well, great. That was just what he needed. Paul and Patryk had better be in the hospital, because otherwise, he was trapped.

The hospital had definitely seen better days. The windows were all boarded up, and it was almost impossible to see where he was going. He half-heartedly wished that he could use the flashlight he’d picked up, but unless batteries felt the need to pop up out of nowhere, he was doing this blind.

Wait. This was a hospital. Surely they had batteries  _ somewhere. _

He searched around for a while, and though most of the doors didn’t open, he eventually reached a pair of doors that led down a hallway that he didn’t want to explore without being able to see. Continuing to search, he finally found another fucking door that actually opened. It was then that he remembered that he had a phone. He pulled it out, grimacing when he saw that there was no signal. He kicked up the brightness and used it to light up the room, grimace turning into a scowl when a little jingle played to alert him to a low battery. His eyes scanned over the room, recognizing it as a simple office, and he turned and began rooting through the desk.

_ Bingo. _

He pulled out a pair of batteries, smiling at his luck. Of course, he didn’t know how fresh they were or how long they’d last, but it was still nice to know that his luck wasn’t completely gone. He shut off his phone and inserted the batteries into the flashlight, clicking it on. The flashlight was dim, but it still gave him a little bit more sight than without it, so it’d do.

Now able to see - just a bit - he began to root through the office. There was nothing of real interest, save for one little letter that stood out from the rest of the documents about how crazy the patients were. It seemed to be written by one of the doctors, and it detailed how the staff of the hospital were irritated at the automatic locking system installed in the doors. It then also mentioned an override switch in the basement.

Well, that at least gave him an way out. Finding his soldiers fell more to the wayside in his mind, now.

He left the office, looking around the main lobby with disinterest. Since all of the doors were locked or otherwise stuck, he chose to instead try the hallway.

The darkness of the hallway was thick, and even with his flashlight he could barely see anything. Here, he found more doors that refused to budge, and he found himself thinking that this hospital had been closed for quite a long time. After all, everything about it - from the horrid darkness to the general decay of the building itself - seemed to point to it being abandoned. But, if it were abandoned, why were the records in such good condition? And the date on that note he’d read was only a week ago.

He let that go, forcing one of the doors open. It creaked loudly, and was actually pretty heavy. The thought that Paul and Patryk wouldn’t have gone into a room that had such an obvious and hard-to-open entrance entered his mind, and he also began doubting them even being here. Besides, if the doors locked automatically, he would’ve been locked out, right?

In this new room, he found several beds. These beds were all stripped bare, and some were covered with what was either rust or blood. Disgusting. The walls were made of brick, and one was painted - in red, of course - with the word “ _ Escape? _ ” written on it.

Having nothing better to do, he stepped over to it and examined it, frowning at the red-letters. Now that he got a closer look, it seemed like they were written with marker, rather than paint or blood, and that just seemed strange. How would marker be able to write so thick?

He knocked on the wall, perking up when he heard his knock echo. The wall was hollow, then, meaning that if he had the right material and spent a little effort, he would be able to knock a hole through it. Especially since it seemed shoddily put together, like they’d built it to cover a preexisting hole.

Spotting something on one of the beds, he chose to examine that as well. He half hoped it was a map of some sort. Unfortunately, it was no such thing. It was a diary, most likely written by a patient at the hospital. The handwriting was almost complete chicken-scratch, and he could only make out a few words. Something about voices and odd people, scary people. He rolled his eyes and wondered why he even bothered. He did, however, flip the page, and the handwriting changed into something much more legible and elegant, cursive.

  
It was a note, “ _ Gotta hide this from that doctor. He might send us into that padded room again, but we have each other to keep ourselves company. It’s their fault for locking us away in here with these nutcases anyway, so they can deal with not being able to leave. _ ” And sitting on the page was a key with a tag, labeling it as the elevator key.

How convenient.

As he picked up the key, stuffing it into his pocket for later use, he heard an odd scratching and gurgling sound. He swept his flashlight through the room, but found nothing. Maybe it was a rat, or some kind of animal. Though that wouldn’t explain the gurgling...

He left the room, leaving the door open in case he wanted to return and try to break down the wall. He was the curious type, and he just wanted to wreck it, even if there was nothing of value on the other side.

The hallway seemed even more oppressive with its darkness, and the air felt kind of hard to breathe. Still, it wasn’t something that stopped him. He made note of it, but he kept walking until he reached the end of the hall. None of the other doors seemed to want to open - all of them were jammed, except one that had something stuck behind it. _Damn_ _it_. It seemed his only course of action was to go to the elevator, which was at the other end of the hallway.

He jammed the button impatiently, wanting to get out of this annoying and disgusting place as soon as possible. Now that he’d been here for a while, he was starting to notice how bad the place stunk. Like, wet dog times a million, plus something akin to rotting meat. It wasn’t pleasant, and he wondered how many showers he’d have to take to get the stench off of him.

He stepped into the elevator, marveling at how the lights actually worked, but he didn’t even get a chance to press a button. The elevator  _ rose,  _ and he groaned. Why couldn’t things work out for him?

  
Oh yeah, because he was  _ himself. _

The doors only opened half-way, and it seemed as though the elevator had gotten itself stuck. He was in between floors and something told him that calling for help would just be a waste of breath. Thankfully, there was just enough room for him to squeeze through, and for once, he thanked whatever ‘lord’ there was that he was so small.

He threw his flashlight up to the next floor, fitting through the door and pulling himself up. The second he pulled his foot out of the elevator, it  _ fell  _ and he was sort of glad that he’d climbed out. Otherwise, it would’ve broken his legs and/or several different parts of his body. After all, he was pretty sure - judging by the elevator’s reading of the floors - that he was on the third floor, and the elevator went all the way down to the basement. A four-story fall was not something he looked forward to.

Not reminding himself that he’d fallen from  _ higher,  _ eheh.

He grabbed his flashlight, dusting himself off and looking both ways down the hall. Deciding to go the more efficient way, he travelled down the rest of the hall, trying all the doors. One opened, but it opened to a room where the ceiling had collapsed and he could see the sky outside. Another opened, but only to a room with one bed and a phone. Everything else was, of course, jammed.

God  _ damn  _ it.

He walked to the other end of the hall, muttering angrily under his breath about how this place sucked. What he got was more doors that were stuck - one of the doors even had the gall to  _ lose its knob  _ and he chucked it down the hall out of frustration - and finally, a door that opened. It only led to another hallway, though, so he didn’t get that far.

Now, in this hallway, he heard something echoing. It sounded kind of like static, and he followed the sound into another room. This one was wide, expansive, and had a wall of windows that allowed him to see without his flashlight. The world outside the windows was white, most likely due to the fog.

The static happened to be coming from a pocket radio, kind of like ones that he and his soldiers used during the radioactive zombie apocalypse that he’d accidentally caused. The thought itself made him feel sick - his soldiers almost  _ died  _ that day - but he picked it up anyway. Why was it playing static? Was it broken?

He heard that same scratching and gurgling from before, and he eyed the rest of the room, finally. This, however, turned out to be a bad idea.

Far over in the corner, the wall was covered in crimson. A terrifying  _ squelch  _ came from whatever was on the ground - it looked like a lump of blood - and standing over the something was a creature. That was the only word he could use to describe it, other than the stereotypical title that the stranger had used -  _ monster. _

The creature had three heads, all different colors. One was pale, one was as greyish blue as a dead man’s, and the other seemed to have no skin at all and was flat out red and bloody. That, unfortunately, was the main head, while the other two were attached to seemingly random places on its body. The pale one was stitched - yes,  _ stitched - _ to it’s left leg, and when it turned, it seemed that they forgot that it had a jaw as it’s mouth was forever held open by the stitches.

The second one was attached to its left hip, but as it was stitched by the side of it’s face, it’s eye socket was nothing but a blood smear and it’s neck hung limply below it. What looked like a thread of flesh fell beneath it, and he swore that he could see something akin to a spine mixed in there. Neither of the two heads had eyes, just eye sockets - it was something familiar and it sent a shiver down his spine.

Another oddity of the creature was the fact that it had three pairs of arms. Not in any kind of logical placing, either. Just kind of, randomly strewn about its sides. He was reminded of a terrifying sort of crude handmade doll, except the fabric used to make it was skin and not, you know, normal fabric.

It’s teeth - the main head’s teeth, as the other two just sat there and gurgled at him with no teeth at all, it seemed - were painted with the same crimson, as were its freakishly long nails. It stood taller than a normal person, and definitely taller than himself. The whole thing screamed monstrous, but he stood his ground. As if he’d let something like this scare him.

_ No way,  _ he told himself,  _ nu-uh.  _ The words did nothing for the quickening pace of his heart.

A strangled breath escaped the creature, and it began shambling closer to him. It seemed like it’s left leg - the one one of the heads was attached to - didn’t work properly, as it dragged when the creature stepped forward. Thus, it was slow. One of the main head’s eyes was narrowed and bloodied, suggesting that it may have gotten into a fight or that someone else had tried to take it down. The other was wide and locked onto him.

He pulled out his gun, backing up slightly. He  _ could _ just leave the room, but who’s to say that the creature wouldn’t follow him? Was this thing even intelligent? Or were it’s actions dictated by instinct?

It made that strangled sound again, and began limping at him faster. He decided, in order to defend himself, he had to attack. The loud  _ bang  _ of the gun echoed in his ears, but it was nothing new. He ran an army, after all, and one did not simply run an army without having experience with how loud guns were.

Surprisingly, the monster took a lot of bullets before it went down.  _ Too _ many. He had back up ammo - of course, he always was prepared - but if he had to shoot anything else like that, he’d be out sooner rather than later. It took pretty much all of his bullets until it collapsed in a strange heap on the floor, something like sobs coming from the three heads.

He kicked each one of them, making sure they fell silent before he moved on to the next one. His heart was still pounding as he reloaded, and he took several deep breaths to calm himself. He mentally sent out a thank you to the stranger he’d met for giving him a sort of warning against this thing, and with a horrible sinking feeling he realized that the man had said “monster _ s _ ”. As in, more than one.

There was more than one of these things.

Swallowing, he went over to inspect the lump of blood, but it was a lost cause. Whatever the lump had been before, it was nothing like it now. That monster had torn it to shreds. At least, that’s what he was assuming, since he’d never seen anything like this before.

He was reminded of the radio when the static faded, and left him with a ringing in his ears. It wasn’t for long, however, and he found that he picked up a signal.

“ _... crash... not injured, but lost... hello?... pay... help...” _

He grabbed the radio off of the floor - he’d dropped it in the ‘excitement’ - and pressed the button. “Who is this? Can you hear me?”

“... _ Red Leader, sir? Is that you? _ ” The signal was fairly weak, but he could still make out the voice of Patryk. “ _ Thank god you’re-... we’ve been looking around town for medical sup- but we got a little los- _ ”

His words kept cutting off, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what he was saying. Tord looked around the room again, keeping an ear open for any gurgling or other unworldly sounds. “It’ll take more than a car crash to put me out of commission, Patryk.” He stated cockily. “Do you guys have any clues as to where you are?”   
  
The line went dead for a few moments, and Tord listened carefully to the building around him. Outside of the door, he could hear something scraping against the floor-  _ metal _ . Someone was dragging metal. Off in the distance, he could hear a  _ boom boom  _ of something pounding on either a wall or a door. He decided that investigating that would be his next course of action.

“ _ We’re- like- _ ” This time, the cuts weren’t from the signal, but from Patryk himself. He seemed to be thinking. “ _ I guess we’re in some sort of lob-? Looks like a hotel. Pa- went out to investigate and he hasn’t co- -ack yet, so I’m not sure.” _

Tord frowned. How the hell did they get to a hotel? He hadn’t seen one on his way here. “A  _ hotel _ . Are you sure?” He asked bitterly.

“ _ Of cou- I’m not sure. I just said so. _ ” Patryk began saying something, but his words cut off and the static got louder. “ _ -ir, I’ve -ot a pro-em. Sor-” _

The signal died, and Tord was left in silence again. Thinking that the radio would be helpful to try and contact his soldiers in the future, he clipped it to his belt and readied his gun along with his flashlight, wandering over to the other door. It just so happened to be the one that he’d broken the handle off of before, so that saved him a little bit of time retracing his steps.

He took a moment, after returning to the door he’d come through, to prepare himself. Whatever was dragging the metal seemed to be pacing, patrolling the same areas and waiting. Since the monster that he’d killed didn’t carry anything metal, it either meant that, yes, the monster was intelligent and could use weapons, or that there was another type of monster.

He didn’t know which thought disturbed him more.

With a deep breath, he clicked the button on the flashlight and held it beside his gun, opening the door gently. He looked down the hallway - as the door he’d gone through was at the end - but saw nothing but darkness and the faint white of the wall. The sound of metal dragging was coming from somewhere around the corner, and it seemed to be getting farther away.

Sneakily, he stepped out of the room, gun at the ready. The radio began playing static softly, and a part of him wanted to turn it off. But then, another part of him liked the sound as it gave him something to listen to other than the metal and the banging.

He turned the corner, brandishing his gun, and it was lucky that he did. It gave him a moment to stare at the thing that was making its way towards him at about the same speed as a senior in high school would walk in the hallway.

This new creature’s head was split open, and nothing was inside of its skull. It had no facial features whatsoever, and its extremely feminine body was covered with scars and bleeding cuts. It was also clothed in a skimpy nurse’s outfit, but the skirt was far too short and disgustingly dirty, so it’s pale legs were hanging out along with its ass... probably. It’s shirt was open and Tord took a moment to ponder how this monster had big breasts. On the left side of it’s chest, however, was a crude scar stitched up by what looked like black wire.

It got pretty close in the time he’d paused, and he cursed himself for being so careless, backing away just in time to dodge the metal pipe being swung at his head. The pipe  _ clanged  _ against the ground, and the nurse jerked back up and slowly dragged it behind her to swing again.

He wasn’t about to let her do that. He opened fire, aiming for the torso since the head was probably a harder target. Once again, it took far too many bullets to take the monster down - he had about three left before he needed to reload again - and he prodded the nurse with his foot, wondering just  _ what  _ kind of creature it was.

  
Alien? No. He’d seen aliens before. While there were some... disturbing ones... none of them came close to this. And these monsters were far too humanoid to be animals. So what the fuck were they? Horrendous science experiments gone wrong?

Maybe.

He was interrupted in his pondering of the creature’s origin by a particularly loud bang, and with a sigh, he chose to go investigate it. He kept his gun at the ready, not wanting to be surprised by any sort of monster that was out on the prowl. He only half noticed that the radio had stopped playing static, and the silence was suffocating.

He traveled down another branching hallway, past a door that was labelled “stairway” - he’d have to remember that for future reference - and into a fairly small room. It must’ve been where they kept the  _ really _ crazy people, and one of the four doors in the room was open to show the padded walls. Those walls were also filthy and torn, and he ignored the room entirely. The less disgusting things he had to go into, the better.

He wandered over to the door where the banging was coming from and, after a moment of careful consideration, unlocked it. He stood back, his gun pointed at the doorway and the flashlight pointing off towards the door he’d come through.

Something tore out of the room, but it didn’t attack him. It was shorter than him, and it seemed to bounce over to the exit door. It wore blue. “Thankie, mister!”   
  
The  _ voice.  _ It was like his old friend’s - the ‘ _ friend’ _ that he hated with all of his heart - but it had such an innocent inflection that it almost sounded totally new. Tord stared after the person who left in such a hurry that you’d think the building was on fire in pure shock. There was no way that Tom was in the hospital with him, and there was no way that he’d managed to act  _ innocent. _ He also wasn’t that much shorter than the norwegian, as the two were almost equal in size.

So who in the world was  _ that? _

He shook his head, deciding that it probably wasn’t important, and inspected the room that the strange Tom had come from. The walls were oddly clean, and a small child’s drawing of a house was pinned to one of the walls. He stepped into the room, eyes catching the glint of a key sitting on the ground.

Damn. This place was almost like a video game, giving him keys left and right.

He walked closer to the key, crouching down to grab it. Unfortunately, it seemed that whatever luck he had before had run out, and the floor gave way under his weight. That was probably why strange-Tom wanted out of the room in the first place.

He fell to the floor below, thanking the same higher power as before for making the floors so close together. He managed to land on his feet, but the shocks of pain that started in his feet and ran up his legs told him that it wasn’t worth it. Cost of being unfazed by things, he guessed. As he stood straight, he looked over the key. It was marked with the letters “PHA”, and he took a shot in the dark and assumed it meant “pharmacy”. There wasn’t much else it  _ could  _ stand for, especially in a hospital.

He looked around the room he’d landed in, seeing nothing but lockers without doors and fashion magazines. This probably was once a female locker room, judging from the purse sitting in one of the lockers. He glanced around and snuck closer to the purse, peering inside of it. There was a switchblade inside, along with a can of pepper spray and a cell phone. He grabbed the phone, seeing no reason to take the weapons since he had his own.

The phone was one of those old flip phones, and when he opened it, it blinded him with how bright the backlight was. The picture set as the wallpaper was of a woman and some man hugging - probably boyfriend and girlfriend. He blinked and wondered what the hell this was doing here, when the phone buzzed and he received a message.

The message sender was titled “bae” with a stupid little heart, and it read as follows - “Amanda? You haven’t answered my calls for like, three days. Where’d you go? To your mommy’s? Come on, bitch. I’ll strangle you if you keep ignoring me. Call me back or else I’m hunting you down with my dad’s shotgun.”

It unnerved him, and he put the phone gently back into the purse.  _ Somebody _ was in danger, but he forced away the completely unnecessary concern for the woman. He was in his own situation, thank you.

He wandered over to the door, opening it without really worrying about what was on the other side. It was silent, and the air once again seemed heavy, but he didn’t hear anything wandering around so he assumed it was safe. The stairway door was thankfully unlocked - he would’ve forced it open if it wasn’t - and he had no desire to explore the second floor. He just wanted to get to the basement.

But, of course, life had to give him the middle finger. The basement was blocked off by what looked like a fence stretching up to the ceiling of the stairwell and a warning about ‘flooding’. God fucking damn it. Maybe he should’ve just fallen with the elevator. At least then he’d be somewhat close to his goal.

He instead went into the first floor, and he was back in the lobby that he started in. The radio static picked up again, and he gripped his gun tighter. Another nurse shambled her way close to him, and he fired the remaining bullets in his gun at her before reloading and firing some more.

Okay. While these monsters were disturbing and all, they didn’t really scare him because they couldn’t do anything to him. It seemed like a wasted effort.

He wandered around the first floor, looking at each door he passed until he ran into the one for the pharmacy. He smiled as his guess was proven correct, and he slipped into the room. The far wall had a safe in it, and the rest of the room was taken up by empty shelves lined the walls with a few boxes filled with bottles of pills here and there. One shelf held a note which grabbed his attention.

“ _ The doctors say we’re crazy, but we don’t think they get it. We four might not get along all the time, but we never tried to hurt anyone. They lie. They always lie. They want to separate us. I don’t think I could survive without them in my head with me. We wish we could get out of here, but the doctors think we’re crazy. _ ”   
  
Tord coughed, muttering to himself how the person probably  _ was _ crazy.

The note continued. “ _ We played a joke on them. Not us by ourselves, that other guy helped out too. We changed the combination for the safe, and now they’ll never be able to get back down to the basement. It’s their fault for putting a key in a safe. We’re done playing around with them, though. The other guy can do what he wants. We just want to make sure Scrib is ok. They took him away a few days ago and we haven’t seen him since. _ ”

What the fuck was ‘Scrib’? Was that some weird nickname that this crazy person came up with? Whatever. The note didn’t give any hints as to what the combination for the safe was, so he was at a loss.

It took him a little while, but he trekked back up to the second floor. He needed to make sure he didn’t miss anything there. The floor was filled to the brim with jammed doors and broken handles, and he was starting to get frustrated as he finally reached the one door the farthest way away from all the stairwell. It led into a patient’s room, with another oddity.

There was another new and twisted creature, hanging from the ceiling. It’s arms were above it’s head, tied by black wire that attached to the ceiling, The poor thing appeared to be torn in half, chunks of its stomach missing and its bloody spine the only thing that seem to be keeping it connected. The same stuff used to tie its hands together bound its feet, as well. It looked dead, with the way it’s featureless head was hanging. Beside the monster was another key, and Tord liked the look of that key.

He stepped into the room, quietly tiptoeing around the monster so as to not wake it up. Who knew if the thing was dead or not. He reached in close, as the key was on the windowsill and the monster was right in front of the windows. He managed to grab it, but the damned thing slipped out of his hand and landed on the floor with a quiet  _ clink. _

Something solid and disgustingly wet wrapped around his torso, and the creature’s head snapped up. A weird frantic humming came from it, and it struggled in its bindings. The gross, wet  _ thing _ shifted to his throat, and it squeezed enough to lift him up. It was at that moment that he realized that this something resembled  _ human intestines.  _ The thought alone made him want to hurl, though he couldn’t because he was currently being strangled by this creature. He had other things to worry about, like not passing out.

Just as he was thinking that, he was thrown harshly to the ground. The weird intestine-rope let go of his neck, and he was free but winded. The flashlight and his gun went skidding across the grimy floor. Before he could even think about picking up the gun to attack the monster, it had grabbed it with it’s weird organ-rope thing (ugh, gross) and threw it at the window. The glass cracked, and it grabbed the weapon and threw it again. This time, the gun went through the window and out into the foggy white void. He would’ve gone after it, but it seemed like there was no way that he could get by the monster and the hole in the window was only big enough for the gun. The glass was thick - had to be, since this was a mental institution, who’s to say that some people hadn’t tried escaping - and he’d have way too much trouble breaking it himself.

So,  _ that _ was a trade off. He hoped this key was worth his weapon. It had the label “Garden” on it, and he wondered where the garden was. It had to be on the first floor, right? Unless this it was one of those extremely weird gardens and it was on the roof, but he doubted that.

Before he left the room, however, he kicked the monster’s spine, snapping it. The monster let out a disturbing mouthless and muffled roar before it slumped over, its legs falling down onto the floor in a crumpled heap.  _ Now,  _ he guessed it was dead, but he had no real reason to ponder if it was or not.

He was cautious on his way down to the first floor, keeping an eye open for any movement and listened for the radio. It seemed like it played static whenever one of those abominations was nearby, which was actually pretty convenient. For once. Footsteps echoed through the hallway on the first floor, but they didn’t sound like the monsters. They sounded more like shoes, boots even. Who in their right mind would be in a place like this?   
  
Unless it was strange-Tom. If it was, well, he had some questions for the little guy. He completely disregarded the fact that he himself was in ‘a place like this’ and therefore just called himself crazy.

The garden turned out to be easy to find, as it was labelled and also was the last door on the right. Simple.

The door swung open with a loud groan of protest, allowing the fog to enter the building, and Tord stepped out into the fenced in area. He looked around, frowning at the lack of anything important, and growled at his lack of weapon. He’d given up his gun for  _ this? _

The fence rattled, and his attention was drawn to a small figure hopping the fence. He ran over to them just as they landed on the other side. “Hey,  _ you! _ ” He tried.

The person - it was strange-Tom, he realized as he saw the blue hoodie - didn’t even look at him at first. He looked left and right, then turned around with a smile and waved. The weirdo bounced off, and once again left the norwegian in a state of complete confusion.

The fence didn’t seem very stable, and if he gave it a few good kicks, it would probably fall. He tried to tell himself that he wasn’t about to try and climb it since it went so high - he wasn’t a masochist and a fall from that height would probably hurt. Still, he had no other leads and he was literally trapped in the hospital otherwise, so he didn’t have much to lose.

As his hands grasped the fence, he heard a  _ siren  _ blaring off in the distance. That had to mean someone was here, right? Sirens weren’t automated, right? It sounded like an old-timey fire horn, and it pierced the chilly air in just the right way to seem almost ominous. He didn’t know how such a normal sound could be  _ ominous _ , but then again there was a lot of crazy stuff happening around him.

A hand gripped the back of his hoodie and threw him away from the fence. The packed dirt of the ground was unforgiving and cold, but it was slightly better than cracking his head on cement. He tried to get up, only to have a foot press onto his neck. He glared at the person above him, his eyes widening in surprise.

This person happened to have on one of his army’s uniforms. Their hands were in their pockets and a cigarette was in their mouth as they casually pressed harder with their foot. It was starting to hurt, now. Their eyes - strangely red - widened, and a small smirk appeared on their face.

Tord’s vision was going dark, and despite his best efforts to get free, he failed. This strange man was  _ heavy.  _ He was going to be suffocated in a mental hospital by what was probably one of the patients, and that thought actually sort of scared him. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die in such a stupid way. He cursed the monster for stealing his gun, giving one last shove to the person’s leg before blacking out.

\--

His body ached, and a gulp of air quickly became a fit of coughs. He shot up, eyes darting around madly in an effort to get a grip of his surroundings.

Okay. He was on a bed. The room around him was strangely clean - was he in the same hospital? There was a small table with a little note on it in front of the window to his right, and other than that the room was completely empty. A chain rattled, and it took him a second to notice that his left hand was cuffed to the bed.

Well  _ shit.  _ How did he get here? Last thing he remembered was blacking out because of that red eyed guy, and a siren. Who was the red eyed guy? Was he a patient? What was he doing still here, when the hospital was obviously closed? Had he taken him here after he passed out?   
  
Too many questions that he was ninety nine percent sure he wouldn’t get the answers to. He ignored them for now, questioning how he was going to break free instead. He didn’t see a key anywhere, and the note probably didn’t have any info.

Was he seriously stuck? That was bullshit.

He pulled at the cuffs, hoping that they were as decayed as the rest of the hospital, but to no avail. They didn’t snap, and  upon further inspection were pretty shiny and new-looking. He groaned at his luck, wishing that whoever had cuffed him had done so with his right wrist instead of his left. After all, all he’d have to do then is remove the hand - robot arms weren’t that hard to fix.

Instead of the cuffs giving, the  _ bed  _ did, and he almost knocked himself out again when the metal broke free from the rest of the frame. The cuff probably wouldn’t be able to slip off, due to the bars on the pole, but at least now he had some sort of a weapon. It wasn’t much, and it was going to be awkward to swing, but it’d do.

He stood up, dusting himself off with his free hand - as the other was holding the bar - and he finally read the note on the table.

_ “Weight is measurable. Pain is not. You can cause pain, but you cannot create weight. Unless it is weight of the mind. -- Death holds the key forward.” _

Well, that was some random bullshit. He flipped over the paper and sighed. It was a map,  _ thank the higher power,  _ and he looked over it. One particular place - room C3 on the first floor - was marked with red. Oh, his favorite color, huh.

He folded the map up and stuck it in his pocket, pulling out his flashlight. He didn’t want to question how it managed to get into his pocket since he was carrying it before he passed out, and it was better that way.

The door opened loudly with a horrible squeak. He almost wished someone was still taking care of the hospital just so the damn doors could be oiled. Outside of the room, the cleanliness disappeared. It actually seemed like the entire building had changed around him. The hallway’s floor was nothing but a metal grate, and though he shined his flashlight down, he couldn’t see the floor below. The walls looked like they were soggy and moldy, and the air was humid and gross.

Not to mention the smell of petrichor and  _ wet  _ and  _ rotten  _ hit him like a brick wall. He had to stop himself from gagging, and only managed to do so because there was a nurse wandering up the hall towards him. She looked a bit different as well, a little dirtier and her clothes were ripped in provocative places.

If this was a tv show, she’d have to be censored. Like, her entire body.

Tord tightened his grip on the bar, readying himself to swing. He wasn’t one for physical weapons or combat, preferring to use ranged tactics to minimize the threat of being hurt, but... well,  _ when in danger _ , he concluded.

The nurse closed in on him and swung, missing. He took a step forward and mirrored the action. Since the monster wasn’t smart, she didn’t dodge, and his attack connected with the empty space in her skull, slamming down on her throat as she made a weird gurgling noise. He repeated the action, grimacing as his hand was getting bloody, and the nurse collapsed to the floor.

He hit her once more before being satisfied with the damage he’d done, and he turned to explore the rest of the hallway.

Oops.

His face hurt now. There, standing right behind him as if waiting for him to turn, was another nurse. Her own bar was held out in front of her and he’d run right into it. It didn’t hurt as much since he’d only walked into the bar instead of getting hit by it, though, so at worst, he’d have a nosebleed. He shook his head to clear it of the stars and readied to take down this nurse as well.

Only, there were more that were filing down the hall, and he didn’t know if he could take on that many with his awkward weapon and limited movement, since the hallway was fairly wide and they could easily surround him. He decided that, for the time being, he’d retreat.

Thankfully, the doors at the end of the hall were unlocked. The ones he went through, in particular, were marked by a red light on top of them. In this hallway, the radio went silent, and he took a moment to catch his breath, raising his fake hand to his nose to gauge how much his nose was actually bleeding.

Eh, not much. He’d manage.

He explored the floor, taking in the sights of the moldy walls and grated floors a bit more. There was a body, slumped over in the corner and blocking a door with no handle, and though the face was obscured, it looked suspiciously like... like one of his companions.

He was seeing things. That hit to the head must’ve given him a concussion.

Now that he was here, though, he was out of things to do. Something happened to the stairwell door - he couldn’t push it open - and the elevator was out. He wasn’t stuck, he was sure of it. He just needed to think... aha! He was on the third floor, right? At least, that’s what the sign next to the stairwell told him.   
  


He wandered over to the place where he’d first encountered strange-Tom, seeing the padded rooms had become flat, dull, and covered in mold. The whole place stunk, but hey, there was still the hole in the floor.

He jumped through, this time losing his footing upon landing and crashing the the floor with a cross between a thump and a clang. He growled at his own failure and hauled himself up, looking around the room he’d entered. It was almost the same as the one he’d been in before, except for the fact that the lockers had been tipped over and there were ruined magazines and photos all over the place. The ink was running off of them and it led to some pretty weird pictures.

He heard the phone from before buzz, and against his better judgement, he pried open one of the lockers to look at it. The purse, which had been pink before, was now dyed a shade of orangish red, and the color deepened randomly. He grabbed the phone, then remembered the knife and grabbed that too.

The phone had a new message. One that read, “ _ I hate you. I hate you so fucking much. The cops came to my house and arrested me. You fucking bitch how dare you. I’ll kill you for this I can’t go to my college anymore cuz they saw my criminal record. You ruined my life you whore. _ ” And, also, a voice mail.

Tord pressed the button, but he didn’t expect the screaming. It was a woman, and underneath he could hear a man talking about how she was going to die and how nobody was going to find her body.

_ Fuck.  _ Just before the voicemail cut off, the man shouted, “ _ You should’ve just gone along with what I said! This whole thing could’ve been avoided!” _

Tord threw the phone across the room, not liking how the woman’s screams echoed in his head, nor how the man’s words stuck. A shudder ran through him at the familiarity of the tone - a tone he’d used not that long ago against people who he’d called friends - and he felt mildly ill. He swallowed thickly and paused, taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, and went to work. The knife was just thin enough, and he picked the lock to the cuff, releasing his hand. It managed to distract him from what he’d just heard, too, so it was really a win-win.

The metal fell to the floor with a clang, and he debated leaving it there. While it was good to have a weapon, the bar was far too big and inefficient. But then, he’d have no weapon other than the pocket knife, and that was no better. Inefficiency, or convenience?   
  
He chose speed overall, hoping that his smaller stature would make up for his lack of power. If worse came to worse, it was better to be able to run at the drop of a hat and he wasn’t able to do that with the large bar. He left it on the floor and left the room.

Now, to where? When he tried the stairwell, once again, it didn’t open. The door to the hallway did, however, and the sound of the radio acting up filled him with a surge of anxiety. Ok. He could do this.

He snuck into the hall, not wanting to draw any unwanted attention to himself, but this level’s floor wasn’t the grating from the above floor. Instead, it was covered in something squishy, like wet cloth. He could hear his every step, and it didn’t take long for him to be noticed.

By another one of those three headed things.  _ Oh hell no. _

Tord waited for the thing to start limping towards him, and the second he saw his opening, he took off down the hall. He really hoped that none of the doors were going to open, because the one at the end of the hall was the only one he stopped to check. He slammed it behind him and turned, almost slipping because  _ holy shit what happened to the floor. _

Ok. This was fine. Everything was fine. Since he couldn’t get to the first floor by stair, this was obviously a way to get down. Except for the fact that he couldn’t see the bottom, but it was still fine. And it was also fine that he could hear banging on the door, could feel the monster trying to throw it open because he was pressed up against it so he didn’t fall.

_ Damn it. What the hell is going on here? Seriously. I think I’m going insane, because there was no way that this place was like this before. _

He took a deep breath and, knowing he was caught between a rock and a hard place, he jumped.

...

Water. He hit water. And not the refreshing kind, either. This stuff felt thick and when he surfaced, it left a film of something on his skin. He guessed that his time staying clean was over, then. He quickly swam over to the side, pulling himself out and shaking himself off.

Ugh, disgusting. He was thankful that, out of all of the rooms, this one didn’t stink. Actually, it smelled like chlorine and bleach, and the ‘water’ hadn’t stung his skin and it didn’t look like anything disgusting when he shined his flashlight onto it, so at least it had that going for it. And hey, it sounded like his radio was working still, and the flashlight still worked too. Small victories went a long way. And he found a large victory when his arm worked properly, save for a small glitch with his pointer finger. It was minor, so he wasn’t worried.

The bad news was that the map was completely ruined, and he tossed the paper into the... pool, he guessed. Why was there a pool in a mental hospital? He didn’t know. He didn’t stop to wonder about it for too long, since the door from the above floor finally opened and the creature came flying down from the ceiling. It landed in the water with a huge splash, and Tord decided that now was the time to get the fuck out of here. Not fast, though, since the monster didn’t seem to be surfacing any time soon.

He wandered over to the door, forcing it open. He managed to shove a table out of the way, but only so far. He ended up wedging the door and shrugging, uncaring. He had places to be, after all. The opening was too small for the monster, as well, so he was somewhat safer now.

This hallway was a lot drier than the ones upstairs, but it was also lit an uncomfortable shade of red. He never thought he’d feel nervous, anxious, or unsafe when near his color, but here he was. There were no monsters that he could see, but the air still felt heavy. He fought to breathe, actually, and it felt like there was a weight laying on his chest.

He wandered down the corridor, eventually arriving at his destination - C3. He pushed the door open, and was hit with the sound of static.

Oh. There was another one of those hanging guys in here. Well, he figured that the other one didn’t really attack him as long as he kept his distance, so he didn’t pay any attention to it. He could’ve snapped the thing’s spine, but what was the point? It hadn’t done anything to threaten him yet.

The room looked familiar, and he didn’t know why until he saw the writing on the wall. “ _ Escape? _ ”

He had nothing better to do, so he pulled on one of the bed’s frames until it gave and swung at the wall. The resulting vibrations shook seemed to shake his entire body, but he kept trying. There had to be something important on the other side of this wall, right? Why else would the map point to it?

The wall gave way after a few swings, and he dropped the bar immediately. His hand was tingling like mad, and he swore he could  _ hear _ the hum from the vibrations in his robot arm. It was strange and he didn’t like it one bit. The bar was pulled away by the monster in the room, bent oddly and thrown at the door, and he winced. At least it didn’t attack him.

The room that was revealed to him was colored in the same red. Childish drawings lined the walls, crude pictures of three stick figure people hanging out together. When Tord flashed his light on them to made out the details a bit more clearly, he could read, “Tomato”, “Red Guy”, and “Me” next to the stick figure family. The “me” looked very suspiciously like Tom.

Maybe these were strange-Tom’s drawings? Who the hell were Tomato and Red Guy?

Unlike the other room, which had four beds, this one had only two. One was clean, like the sheets were just laundered, but it was horribly bent and the sheets were torn all over the place. The other was covered in a very suspiciously red liquid, and it was still dripping from the cloth covering the mattress.

And there, sitting in the corner of the room, was another dead body. This one resembled one of his closer  _ old friends  _ and he had to look away, not willing to see the purple hoodie stained by blood. He gave another sweeping look to the room and chose to investigate the bloody bed.

He used his robot hand to peel back the sheets, wiping it on his pants afterwards. All that was there was a single, unmarked key, and he picked it up. Now he had no idea where to go, and he seriously doubted life was going to be easy on him and make it so the key went to a door on the first floor.

The monster in the other room began humming, but it was quickly stopped by a sick  _ snap.  _ Tord turned and saw the man who’d choked him before standing in the hole between the rooms. His face was blank, though his eyes were still wide, and Tord thought he looked kind of familiar even though he was sure he’d never seen him before.

The man began stepping towards him, and he pulled out a gun.

That was the norwegian’s cue to move. The stranger fired at him, but missed as he quickly dove to the side, passing the man and jumping through the hole before bolting out the door. He ran down the hall, hearing the man shoot at him from the doorway. He missed having his own gun.

One bullet grazed his leg, and he winced. He tried his best to ignore the pain as he threw open the door at the end of the hall. A quick moment of indecision, and he crossed the hall to the stairwell. The door wasn’t broken, wasn’t jammed, but it was locked. He shakily tried the key and didn’t even bother with being thankful that it worked as he heard the door he’d come through open.

Shit, that bastard was quick.

He slammed the door shut behind him and took off down the stairs, as the other stairs were blocked off by boxes, a gurney, and a table. There was no door marking the floor down here, and there was water up to his knees. Fuck. This was the gross kind of water, the kind that was colored brown and stunk. He didn’t focus on it, instead thinking of just what to do.

Should he hide? Should he look for a weapon?

Footsteps came down the stairs, and he trudged through the water, keeping his hand pressed to the wound he had. He could feel the blood, and that in combination with the water was making him a little sick. He couldn’t open any doors in the time it took for that bastard to get down to his level, and he was a sitting duck. There was nowhere for him to go.

The stranger lowered his gun, stepping closer to the norwegian. He didn’t seem hindered by the water at all, which sort of pissed Tord off because how fair was that?

A punch to his face, and everything went black for a second.

When he came to, he found himself sitting down in total darkness. He pulled out his flashlight, shining it in his surrounding area, but found nothing except a very close wall both to his right and his left. The air around him was heavy, humid. He was still wet, very much so, and that coupled with the close quarters led to the gross air.

He found out that he was in a cupboard, though. How nice.

He kicked the door open, stepping out onto the dusty floor, and took a moment to look around. Where was he? It looked sort of like a storage room. And, hey, there were bandages on one of the shelves that looked like they could be used. He grabbed them, using the pocket knife to cut them into the right length, and tied them around the wound on his leg. Now all he needed was some painkillers and he’d be good to go! ... He had to stay positive, and joking was helping matters a little.

He stepped out of the room, blinking at his strange surroundings. He hadn’t been to this part of the hospital before, and things clicked in his head. This was the basement, wasn’t it? What do you know, he managed to get there alive! He wandered through the small hall, searching for the electrical room. That was the most likely place for the switch, right?

Bingo.

The door was surprisingly easy to open, compared to all the other ones, and he found the switch. A second later and he threw it, making the lights go out for just a moment before everything went back to normal. That should’ve made the door open, right?

He made his way back to the first floor, jumping at every small sound. He didn’t know what had happened, but the hospital had gone back to the way it was before he’d gone to the garden. The gate that had been blocking his way before was open, now, and the whole thing seemed sort of pointless. All that he’d managed to do in here was get a little spooked and lose his gun.

He pulled the door open, and the fog of the outside was refreshing after breathing the stale air in the hospital for so long. He took a moment to breathe it in, feeling like someone was watching him. He pulled out his knife, ready to defend himself in case it was that weird prick again.

It wasn’t. Actually, it was the eyeless man from earlier. He had a sort of surprised expression on his face, though it quickly gave way to amusement. “I should’ve warned you about the doors.”   
  
Tord didn’t see the need to answer the man with a, ‘yeah, probably’. He stayed silent, allowing the door to slam shut behind him.

The stranger laughed. “So, I’m gonna guess that you’ve seen the monsters, now? I’m not even gonna ask what happened in there.” He shook his head. “Probably hell. Anyway, did you find your ‘friends’?”

“No.” The norwegian answered shortly. “They contacted me and told me that they were at a hotel.” Why he bothered telling this man anything was beyond him. It wasn’t his business at  _ all. _   
  
“Hotel?” The stranger’s empty eyes narrowed. “The only one I can think of would be the Lakeview Hotel, way off across the lake. How the hell did they get there?” He paused, as if waiting for a response, and steamrolled ahead when he received silence. “I dunno the right way to go, but you’re better off following Nathan Avenue.” He pointed down the street. “Go that way and take a left. Then you’ll be on the road.”

Tord liked that he was helping out, at least. “Thanks, I guess.” He stepped out from in front of the hotel and into the street, peering off into the fog in the distance.

“Hey, wait.”   
  
The norwegian wasn’t moving, but he did turn his head to look at the stranger straight on.

“Did you see... well, I guess he kind of looks like a kid. Did you see anyone like that wandering around inside there?” The man tilted his head towards the building. “I’ve been looking for him - well, we all have. We wanna make sure he doesn’t get himself hurt.”

Was he talking about strange-Tom? “I think he jumped the fence in the garden.” Wait. What did he mean by  _ we? _   
  
The man’s face fell, and he turned to look down the street in the opposite direction. “Oh. Shit. If he runs into one of those things...” He took a deep breath. “Good luck finding your friends. I’ve got my own guy to find.” He turned on his heel, walking down the street and pulling something out of his pocket.

Tord shrugged, following the stranger’s advice and following his own road. He had a feeling, though, that getting to the hotel would be a pain in the ass.


	2. Ignore This Author's Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This note is out of date, as I have returned. However, I will be leaving it up in case some people want to know why there was such a long hiatus between chapter one and two. Apologies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--

I'm updating this so more people could see this, instead of it being tucked away into an author's note.

First of all, thank you. All of you, who read this story. It means a lot to me that you'd take the time to actually read what I'd written, as most of the time, my writing gets overlooked. And to those who commented, even if I didn't reply,  _thank you._ You inspired me to keep writing, keep moving forward, and its something I've never quite felt before. I can never explain how happy all of the support I got for this story means to me.

Onto the more pressing matter, though. I am, by rough definition, dropping this story. This is probably the only second chapter you'll see from me.

Why? Well, recently, there was a huge... deal, in the fandom. I'm not going to go into details, as most people should already know them by now. A lot of people are leaving the fandom. Artists, writers, anyone. And it makes me sad, to see such a fandom break apart because people couldn't keep to themselves and play nice. (Such is the fate of fandoms, it seems.)

But more onto the point, the reason I am dropping this story, and likely won't post anything (at least for a while) is because of my own anxieties and discomfort. I am, at this time, extremely uncomfortable writing this kind of story, and I'm not sure if it will go away like it did before (allowing me to write "We meet Again"). More so, this fandom has been giving me extreme anxiety recently, and with everyone leaving with messages of "I hope you're happy" and "look at what you've done" - I can't help but feel blamed. Trust me, I know that I wasn't a part of the huge problem (at least, I'm pretty damn sure I wasn't), but it's still hitting me in a way that makes me think so. It's a personal thing; I've been taught to take the blame when shit hits the fan.

And this time, that anxiety and discomfort has stopped me from continuing this story, a story that I loved writing. Not because of the weirdness and disgusting parts of it, but because I love analyzing characters and Silent Hill is the perfect place for that.

I may, and I repeat,  _may_ come back to this story (spoiler alert I did), if the anxiety goes down. (It did yay) But I wouldn't get my hopes up. I have half of chapter two written, and it's been like that for weeks because of the aforementioned anxiety making it impossible to write. However, if I'm ever struck with the inspiration I had at the beginning, i may write and post the rest of the chapter. It won't be as good as the first - my beta reader has gone away to college and has  _zero_ time to read my crap - but hopefully it won't be garbage.

In the event that I do not pick this story back up, well. As I said in the notes last chapter, you can message me on tumblr about it. I had the entire story planned out, so if you want a rough outline and any other ideas I had for this, I can provide it. I just can't write it out in a good manner. (My tumblr is hello-this-is-ghost)

I apologize for letting everyone down. This story was fun to write, and it allowed me to see that my writing was... good. It might not have been the most popular story on this site - didn't deserve that, of course, my writing is atrocious - but it had some commenters who were excited for the next chapter. And I feel like shit not being able to provide it for them, but I have to let go of things that cause me anxiety, so...

With this, I bid you all farewell, in hopes that my anxiety goes away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--


	3. Tord vs. Stairs (Among other things)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Going down... (Hey, I'm back)

There were many things that Tord hated at this particular moment. There was the fact that the fog was so thick that he couldn’t see two feet in front of him without squinting, and his eyesight in his right eye was already shit anyway so it wasn’t helping matters. Then, there was the irritation that came from that radio he’d picked up in the hospital since it saw fit to go off every few moments, and there was no denying that the radio and those horrific creatures were related in some way. It seemed that the monsters had taken to the streets, as he’d seen at least their silhouettes through the thick white fog.

He hated the monsters with a burning passion. It wasn’t that they disturbed him- well, they did, but it wasn’t  _ just  _ that. There were far too many of them and he had no way of fighting them off other than a wimpy pocket knife. It was at this time that he regretted his decision to not take a bar of metal from the hospital beds. He felt vulnerable, and he absolutely  _ despised  _ that feeling. It brought back memories of times he’d rather forget, memories of being bedridden while his arm was infected, memories of nights right after he’d ordered to have it removed.

Yeah. He didn’t want to remember that any more than he had to.

Thankfully, the monsters out on the streets were pretty dumb. As long as he didn’t call attention to himself and kept the radio’s volume down low, he could sneak by them without them noticing him. There was only one close call with one of the nurse creatures, but she was easy to dispose of even with the knife. It just took a little longer than it should’ve.

Changing back to the main topic, aka things that Tord hated about this whole situation. His worst anger came from his current predicament. He’d followed the oddly eyeless stranger’s advice and followed the road. The buildings had stopped, and a little ways away he could hear water. For the longest time, he walked, keeping his eyes peeled for any new shadows in the fog. And then fucking suddenly, without even a  _ warning,  _ the road dropped off into a foggy abyss. And the  _ best  _ part was that he’d almost walked right into it, too focused on the sound of gurgling somewhere off to his left to pay attention to where he was going.

Tord stood there for a long few moments, glaring at the white emptiness in front of him. There was nowhere else for him to go, since the other way - down the street and all the way back into town - was blocked off by a rusty fence and police tape. To him, it was like the town (or the world, if he was being honest) had raised a middle finger and spat out the words, “Oh, you wanna find your soldiers? Too damn bad, commie!”

  
Oddly, ‘the world’ sounded a lot like Tom. The thought pulled a groan from the norwegian, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath in an effort to push the thought away. Thinking about old times wouldn’t help him and neither would stewing over the fact that he had the worst luck ever. He opened his eyes, much calmer in mind, and began looking for anything  _ else  _ that could be of use.

His gaze fell onto a building to his right, old and leaning dangerously to the left. It seemed that half of it had fallen into the foggy depths where the ground was supposed to be. Having nothing better to do - and feeling more than slightly worried about the chilling scraping and groaning that was coming from behind him and getting  _ closer _ \- he decided to investigate the building. Just to see if it had any clues as to if there was another road to the hotel or something.

When he reached the building, he saw that on the glass doors leading into it - the glass was filthy, he noted absentmindedly - was a sign. It read, “Welcome to the Silent Hill Historical Society. Unfortunately, we have had to shut our doors due to structural problems. We have relocated all of our exhibits to the following location.” Tord didn’t bother reading the location, since he wasn’t interested in whatever their ‘exhibits’ were. He did, however, chuckle as he read ‘structural problems’.  _ Half of the fucking building was gone.  _ That didn’t count as ‘problems’, that counted as ‘oh shit our building is split in half hope Carl didn’t fall into the abyss with the rest of it.’

Contrary to the sign saying that the place was locked up, one of the doors was slightly ajar, allowing him to pull it open fully and wander in. The entrance room was horribly dusty, and smelled of mold and aged wood. It resembled a very old house that had been left to rot for a long time. The walls had been covered with flowery wallpaper at some point, but it had begun to peel off. The windows allowed a tiny bit of light through, but they were so caked with dirt and grime that Tord honestly didn’t know how.

He wandered further into the room, a little nervous as the wood flooring creaked and groaned beneath his feet. The door swung to its original position behind him, and he concluded that it needed to be oiled in order for it to actually shut properly. Now that he was in the room, he figured it must’ve been a greeting room, where people signed in or paid to see the society’s ‘exhibits’. There were empty picture frames on the walls - some cracked and some even fallen onto the floor - along with a desk, though no chair was behind it and no books or a cash register were in sight.

Walking further into the building, he could see fog sneaking in. He paused in a little hallway between the entrance room and a second room, staring at the missing half of the building. It seemed that this was the only place it was actually noticeable, and he wondered how much of the society actually fell away. Two rooms did not make a museum.

The second and only other in tact room must’ve been one of their ‘exhibits’. He could barely see, since there were no windows, and he pulled out his flashlight to aid him slightly. The room was filled to the brim with display cases, though the glass for most of them was smashed in and there was nothing of true value in them. On the walls was more of that cliche flowery wallpaper appearing somewhat different from the previous room’s due to it having mold actually growing on it, rather than behind it.

He wandered over to a picture frame hanging on the wall, feeling no need to rush since he hadn’t heard anything threatening while in the building. The picture was surprisingly still in the frame, and it was labelled “Underneath the Surface - Locally Painted”. The picture depicted a person falling in darkness. Upon closer inspection, the ‘darkness’ was more blue than black, so it was entirely possible that it was water. The person’s eyes were closed, and there was a few fluffs of white above them, most likely bubbles if they were in water.

He frowned at the painting, feeling slightly unnerved by it. It was such a dark picture and not a particular situation he’d love to be in. He never wanted to drown. If anything, he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, not some wimpy death because he got stuck underwater. Although... there was something else that put him off about the picture. Something not about the dislike of the death, it was deeper than that. He didn’t focus on it, seeing no reason to freak himself out while staring at a stupid painting.

He moved on to another painting, eyes widening. This particular painting took up an entire wall, and it strangely made him feel personally attacked. It took all of his self control not to pull out his knife and cut it into shreds. The picture was labelled as “The Missing Piece - Locally Painted”. It showed a whole circle, colored with every color of the rainbow along with white and black, but without one certain, crucial color. Meanwhile, there was a small broken and misshapen thing off to the side that was colored his  _ absolutely favorite color,  _ red.   
  
Unable to hold himself back anymore, he found a laugh bubbling up his throat as he pulled out his knife. Whoever had made it  _ must’ve _ been poking fun at his conflict with his friends, despite them probably not knowing about it. He slashed at the blue in the circle first, tearing the fabric of the canvas the picture was painted on. The action was almost cathartic, and he continued on to the purple, and then the rest of the colors. He left the green completely untouched, allowing the scraps to fall away from the wall unscathed, and he ended his rampage by stabbing the knife into the wallpaper behind the picture.

Taking deep breaths to calm his sudden burst of anger, he closed his eyes before they snapped open again. He growled, wiping at his face with the sleeve of his human hand, unable to believe he’d begun tearing up. It was stupid. This whole thing was stupid. He continued to try to calm down, eyes falling to the untouched misshapen red piece, and he felt a pang of sorrow and loneliness.

He stood there for a while, though the exact amount of time was lost to him since he didn’t have a clock, before he stood up straight and frowned at the way that the knife had gone through the wallpaper. It was stuck hanging in the flowery print, which either meant that the wall was weak and soft enough that a little pocket knife could puncture it, or that there was nothing behind the wallpaper in the first place.

He grabbed the knife, pushing it down through the material as far as his arm could go before pulling it out. With his human hand - since he always favored his right hand when it came to weapons - he pulled the cut open. Behind the wallpaper was an opening in the actual wall, confirming his suspicions. He pocketed the knife and fixed his grip on his flashlight, having held it awkwardly to pull at the wall covering. Cautiously, he shined the light into the opening, but there was nothing but darkness to see. If he wanted to know what was on the other side, he’d have to go through the hole.

Using both hands now, he tore the wallpaper open enough for him to slip through. Beyond the hole was nothing but damp, musty air and the sound of rushing water. His surroundings changed from a house that was unkept for decades to something more akin to a hallway. It wasn’t as disgustingly dirty as the Historical Society behind him, so he’d take it. In front of him was a seemingly endless set of stairs, stretching downwards into a dark void that not even his flashlight could illuminate.

Taking only a moment to ponder whether he should follow them, glancing back uncertainly, he nodded shortly to himself and began walking down the steps.

...

_ Ok. I have another thing to add onto that list of shit I hate. These. Fucking. Stairs. _

The norwegian turned back again, a low growl in his throat. While he couldn’t see the top anymore - due to the weakness of his flashlight and the thickness of the darkness - he still felt like he had gotten nowhere. He’d been walking down the stairs for a while now, only to get more stairs, no sense of progression, and more than a few drops of cold water on his head from the ceiling. He must’ve been under a body of water.

He sighed and continued on, mind wandering from the thoughts of  _ should I turn around or should I just keep going?  _ to questions. Questions like how his soldiers were doing. They  _ were _ capable men when not driving, but these monsters weren’t like anything that Tord had ever seen. Although, there was also the obvious question of if Paul and Patryk even  _ saw  _ the monsters. It was sort of dumb to question, but the norwegian seriously doubted that the town was overrun by monsters and nobody was doing a damn thing about it. Or saying anything about it, for that matter.

He also began to wonder about the other people he’d met in this town, since he had nothing better to occupy his time. There was the stranger, the eyeless one who helped him out... kind of. He wanted to know who the guy was, why he was searching for the strange-Tom. He wanted to know how the stranger had such a good grasp on the town, despite not living in it. Strange-Tom was mystery as well, considering the childish tone and overall weirdness of his actions.

Also, that one guy with the red eyes. That guy who always attacked him without any given reason, though when he came close enough to kill, he never did. Why would he shoot at him if he wasn’t looking to kill? His motive made absolutely no sense, at least to Tord. He couldn’t piece it together. It was possible that the man was only looking to be a threat, and not a murderer...

Tord stopped the train of thought, a shiver going down his spine at the familiar description. Hadn’t Patryk used that to describe him once, after he’d gotten his arm hacked off and had been miserable about everything that had happened between him and his friends? It left a bad feeling hovering over him and he switched gears in his head, thinking about what he’d do after finding his soldiers.

Thankfully, that way of thinking kept him distracted for long enough that he got to the bottom of the stairs. It was uneventful, and all that was down here was a door that swung open quietly. And on the other side of the door was another hall.

“Why can’t this place just give me an escalator ride to the hotel? Is that too much to ask?” The irritated man grumbled under his breath, fully knowing that it was impossible for him to get his wish. Hey, one could dream.

Tord shuffled down the hall, yawning once as he began to grow bored. There was no change in scenery, though the drips hitting him from the ceiling were becoming increasingly frequent. He put his hood up with a huff, though the huff was cut short. He paused, hearing the splintering of wood behind him, and he turned curiously to see what it was. His eyes widened and he quickly began running in the opposite direction.

To anyone else, what was chasing him might’ve looked silly. Hell, in any other situation, Tord would laugh at the sheer oddness of it. Instead, he found himself horrified by the creatures. They stumbled behind him, creating loud thumps and bangs on the wooden floor. From what he’d gathered from his short glimpse, the new monster had four legs that didn’t work together. It lacked a head, and its body looked like two torsos sewn together.

And there were two of the damn things chasing him down like some kind of prey. He didn’t know how dangerous they were, considering they didn’t have anything to hurt him with other than the legs, but he didn’t want to find out.

The chase went on, and he passed by several doors that he couldn’t bring himself to check. He doubted they’d open, in all honesty. If his trip to the hospital had taught him anything, it was that doors always were jammed in this town. Though, he eventually came to the conclusion that he should’ve tried to open at least one of them when, at the end of the hall, he had to skid to a halt because the floor was missing.

He turned in time to see one of the four legged creatures shoot past him into the hole, but only a second later, he was falling as well. The second one had crashed into his chest with such force that it must’ve broken or at least cracked his ribs. He’d be lucky to get off with just a bruise and some soreness for a few days. He tried to shove the monster off of him, but it had wrapped its legs around him and was holding on for dear life. Tord struggled to move his arms and managed to grab his wimpy knife with his right hand before stabbing the creature ruthlessly.

A crude and disgusting, though muffled sort of throaty noise came from the beast, and it squeezed him tighter. It was getting extremely hard to breathe with the thing wrapped around him and-

He smacked into the floor so hard that he bounced slightly, banging his head enough to see stars. The creature had slipped off of him. There was an audible snap and one look at the monster’s legs and feet told him that they were broken. Not that it mattered to him at the moment, as he was too busy trying to breathe. He rolled over onto his side, gasping for air. The sounds echoed off the walls. He was dizzy, and the inability to breathe sent him into a panic that was not helping him in the slightest. If anything, it made the problem worse since his gasps came quicker and quicker and less and less air was getting into his lungs.

His focus was on himself, so it came as a very frightening surprise when he heard a gun go off. The creature that had slid off of him let out another muffled cry before it collapsed to the ground in defeat. It was silent in the room for a short while, the only sounds coming from the struggling norwegian as he tried to breathe.

A hand grabbed the front of his hoodie, pulling him up to be eye level with the person, and even though his vision was starting to blur, he could make out that the person had dangerously red eyes. His own eyes closed and he braced himself as much as he could for an attack, seeing as he couldn’t defend himself when he  _ couldn’t even fucking breathe _ . Instead of the red-eyed man attacking him, though, the grip shifted to the back of his hoodie and began pulling him, making him fall straight on his ass.

The jolt seemed to get his lungs working again, and a large gasp left him coughing. He was limp in the red-eyed man’s grasp, save for some jerks from trying to get as much air as possible into his body. He didn’t feel like struggling, instead letting the man do as he wished. He was far too dazed from the fall to do much. He did end up telling himself that, in the event that the red-eyed man took him to something dangerous, he’d begin to try to escape.

The building around him was odd. He couldn’t see much, as the darkness persisted and his eyes wouldn’t adjust, but he could hear the sounds of metal banging against the ground and walls. Loud gurgling echoed through the halls along with a sick squelching. It took far too long of a moment to realize the gross sound was coming from his attacker’s shoes on the ground.

He grimaced, closing his eyes to stop the pounding in his head. He didn’t want to think about how disgusting the floor he was being dragged across was, though he could feel it with his human hand. The ground felt like it was covered in cloth. Very,  _ very  _ soggy cloth. When he raised his hand and rubbed his fingers together, the water felt almost oily, slimy.

His inspection of the ground was cut short as he was suddenly in the air. He smacked into the floor and consequently a wall, and he let out a pained groan. He could only open his eyes a little bit, so he could just barely make out the red-eyed man setting down his flashlight and knife on the... bed? The flashlight was on, showing him the outlines of the things in the room and also allowing him to watch the strange man step through a door made out of bars.

The door closed with a loud clang, and it dawned on his foggy mind that he was thrown into a jail cell. He chuckled at the hilarity of it. Here he was, travelling all of this way, only to be thrown into a jail cell by some asshole who wanted him dead, maybe.

He stayed on the ground, unwilling to move much as it would irritate his head. He tuned out everything else, eyes falling shut again. His strange state of mind had him floating, not registering that laying on the floor was not exactly the smartest thing to do, since there were obviously monsters around.

Instead, Tord thought back. If he was going to be honest, he found the whole ‘jail’ thing quite fitting for him, especially if he were to die here. He’d done many terrible things to many different people, most of whom he didn’t even know. He’d killed a lot of people simply because they’d gotten in his way. He’d killed others for the hell of it, because he found that killing them was fun. He’d lied to even his own soldiers, stolen from so many places, ignored the pleas of the injured for his own personal gain.

And he’d hurt the people who were closest to him.

He’d made mistakes, don’t get him wrong. Sometimes his killing was on accident, or it was part of a risky strategy that didn’t succeed. Such was the case with that neighbor kid whose name never really stuck in his head. He’d never meant to kill the poor bastard, but that’s the way things played out. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Speaking of wrong places, he felt a small wave of regret as he remembered his friends. His mind brought up thoughts of punching Matt, hitting him in the only place he ever truly protected. He’d felt like shit after doing that, but he justified it back then. After all, the ends justified the means, even if that included beating Matt to goddamn bloody pulp if need be.

Ugh, that thought made him want to vomit. It was either that, or the way that he felt like he was spinning even though he was completely stationary.

His mind then drifted onto Tom, and the regret eased ever so slightly. At least, that’s what he told himself. He’d never feel bad about what he did to Tom, chasing him out and then trying to kill him, blowing up their old house in the process. He had done what was needed in order to get his robot without a problem, and having Tom around being all suspicious would’ve been a  _ huge  _ problem. Though, he had to admit that trying to kill the eyeless prick was a little bit too much.

Karma got him back for that, though. In the end, he was left without a robot, worse vision in his right eye, permanent scarring on the right side of his body, an arm that would later have to be chopped off and replaced, as well as  _ “I am NOT your FRIEND! _ ” echoing in his head for weeks afterwards. He told himself, even now, that he was just sad about the robot and angry over his injuries. There was no possible way he’d feel terrible about hurting someone who he hated, no way imaginable that he’d felt hurt himself at the claim that they’d never been friends.

His thoughts did a backflip right onto the final one of his friends, and his chest felt tight at just the memory of his voice. He was struggling to breathe again, this time for an entirely different reason.

Tord had never meant to hurt Edd, in any way. While in the robot, his mind had been clouded with his future. He’d lost sight of what was going on in the present, too focused on his own victory. Telling Edd that they had never been friends, burning the bridge between them was never part of the plan. And that was the one thing that he’d felt the most remorse about. He’d destroyed their friendship, the one they’d had for so long, simply because he was a fucking idiot.

It surprised him when he felt something wet on his face, and he took a shuddering but deep breath, not realizing that he’d been holding it. He wiped the wetness away with his sleeve, opening his eyes. His vision was blurry and he blinked to clear it. Instead of feeling angry at himself for being so emotional over the past, though, he felt more... cold. Empty. Lonely.

He needed to find his soldiers.  _ Fast.  _ Otherwise this whole town might end up making him depressed. The two idiots may not know how to drive, but they’d be able to stop him from imploding from his thoughts.

Finally coming back to some type of awareness, he sat up. The side of his face was covered in whatever slime was on the ground, and he was quick to try and wipe it away. It was then that he gagged over just how  _ bad  _ the place stunk. Mold, garbage, and something rotten hit his nose and he covered it with his dry sleeve. Ugh, it cut through the fabric! He needed to get out of this place before it made him throw up.

He stood, grabbing his flashlight and knife from the bed. With the light, he scanned the room, finding nothing of particular interest except where he’d been laying. The floor was disgustingly green, but the place where he’d been had some white poking through. Upon closer inspection of his hoodie, some of the green stuff on the ground had clung to the cloth, and he grimaced. Well, there went another hoodie. He debated taking it off, but decided against it. It was either the gross hoodie or freezing, and while neither sounded appealing, he didn’t particularly like being cold.

He then moved over to the door, finding that it was surprisingly easy to open. As he stepped out, he began to wonder... the place had gone eerily silent. Hadn’t there been banging before? Where had it all gone? Or had it just been in his head? Fuck, was he hallucinating?

Just as he thought that, a mighty  _ boom  _ came from somewhere else in the building, and he decided that pondering the lack of noise was not something that he should’ve been doing. He chose instead to look for either a way out, or a way further. He figured that both of those options would probably be elevators anyway.

He travelled to the end of the hall of cells, finding nothing else in any of them. Some of the doors were open, some weren’t and had rusted shut. There was nothing of importance, so he didn’t stick around to try and pry some of them open. Leaving the hall, he came to another. This one, thankfully, wasn’t full of cells. There was a table first thing out of the door, and on the table was a stuck on map and a note.

_ “If you are searching for your friends, you might want to try mental hell. Perhaps you’ll find them there. But you also might want to hurry, because I won’t hesitate to kill them. ~ PT” _

Tord’s eyes narrowed at the neat handwriting of the note, mouth set in a tight frown. Who the fuck was “PT”? Was that a nickname? And what did it mean by ‘mental hell’? It wasn’t a place, as far as Tord was aware. Then again, this town was very odd, so it might’ve been some type of place he’d never heard of. He then winced, reading the last line over again.   
  
Paul and Patryk were in danger, it seemed. Whoever this “PT” was, he didn’t sound too fond of them. A threat to kill them? Hell no, not on his watch.

With a newfound fire to make progress, the norwegian quickly studied the map. His eyes were almost instantly drawn to an unlabelled room, and his expression lightened. If this was a prison, it would make some type of sense for there to be weapons somewhere within the walls. With that in mind, he nodded.

The trip to the unlabelled room was uneventful. Every monster that he came across was very much dead. He didn’t dwell too much on what had killed them all, as there was still  _ something  _ that was alive. There were several more loud crashes that came from elsewhere in the prison, and he didn’t want to find out what the creature that was making the noise was like.

The unlabelled room was completely empty, much to his dismay. The only thing in the room were empty lockers and a small piece of paper with “PT” written on it. What a fucking asshole.

Now, he was at a loss. It didn’t seem like this prison had an exit. At least, not one that was marked on the map. He took to wandering the building, still grimacing at the horrible stench of the place. The crashes worried him, yes, but they still seemed far away. He just needed to figure out what he was doing before whatever was causing them came after him. Other than the crashes, the area was relatively safe.

The prison was disgusting. He wasn’t just saying that because it was a place he avoided, because it was literally gross in every way. The floor made a weird squelching sound as he walked, and every inch of the place was covered in greenish mold. Also dirt, and relative filth. It was just like the hospital, but way worse in terms to someone keeping the place tidy. The bars of the cells were rusty, and a good kick broke them. They didn’t function as a weapon since they were far too brittle.

Tord eventually sighed, stopping to stand in the middle of a hallway. Nothing of true importance was anywhere, and he was truly feeling stuck. There had been a single locked door at the end of the hallway he was standing in, but there were no keys hidden around anywhere. The only door left for him to try would be the one he was standing in front of. It was also the door that the crashing was coming from.   
  
Not exactly the smartest move, but it was the only move he had.

He cautiously pushed the door open, since it had no handle to turn. The door itself was made of metal, and almost seemed reinforced. Maybe it was just how heavy it seemed to him, he didn’t know, but the damn thing was  _ thick _ . It also squeaked, loudly, and thankfully didn’t slam shut behind him when he finally stepped through it. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to get it open again if it had.

He chewed on his lip as he slowly, carefully crept into the room. The sounds had stopped, leaving him in an uneasy silence. His first instinct was to reach for his gun, but the memory that he no longer had it kicked in and he simply pulled out his knife. It was better than nothing.

The room was very dark. Very wide, as well. He couldn’t see any walls around him, and it almost seemed like he was outside. The ground had lost the squishiness. Instead, it felt more solid, and there was grass growing from it. How? Tord wasn’t about to guess. He gave up on trying to figure out the ‘hows’ of this town a long time ago.

He stopped as he heard something moving off to his left, moving his flashlight to illuminate it. It sounded sort of like quick footsteps, or even a horse. He let out a quiet, quick sigh of relief when he  _ saw _ nothing out of the ordinary, and he continued forward.

It was only a short time later that he ran into something, most likely in the middle of the room. Just seeing it, though, broke any sense of safety or relative calm he’d had. In fact, it sent a harsh chill down his spine, and he couldn’t avert his gaze.

The thing in question was a gallows, somewhere to hang and execute a prisoner. The prison most likely didn’t use it anymore, otherwise the place was a lot older than what Tord had assumed before. Gallows weren’t used that much nowadays. However, it wasn’t the place of execution that frightened him.

There was a body hanging from the gallows. Three, in fact. Two looked like they were burn victims, one even looking more like that monster that stole his gun earlier in the hospital since its body seemed to be stretched out and its feet were touching the platform below them. The spine wasn’t showing, though. Perhaps it was simply a tall man, though there was the question of how he had been hung like that if the assumption was true. The other one had a pair of shoes on with a dirtied checkered pattern.   
  
The third body, though, was... familiar. Sickeningly so. While it shared its appearance with the other two, it was wearing clothing. Most notably,  _ a green hoodie. _

There was another noise behind him, and he turned on a dime to investigate it. He swallowed thickly, sweeping the flashlight left and right to try and find out what the noise was. He ignored how the light was shaking, ignored how he could taste something metallic from biting into his lip too hard.

_ Damn it.  _ He took a long, deep breath to calm himself. He felt sick, and not just because of the terrible filth that he’d been walking through before. He found himself falling to his knees, knife dropping to the ground as he ran his robotic hand through his hair.

More sounds surrounded him, but he chose to ignore them. After all, they didn’t seem to be dangerous, and they didn’t seem to be getting closer. He swallowed thickly, muttering quietly to himself that this was fine. There’s no possible way that  _ that  _ body was who he thought it was. His mind must’ve been playing tricks on him, just like at the hospital.

With that belief, he finally forced himself to stand, grabbing the knife off the ground. Internally, he began cursing and chastising himself for being so weak willed. He’d seen this kind of stuff in the hospital. This shouldn’t have affected him as much as it did, and he smacked himself to snap himself out of it.

Well, something did snap. Behind him. Why did everything happen  _ behind him?  _ He turned, slower this time as he wasn’t looking forward to seeing the green-covered body again, but his eyes were drawn to the first body. Not the one in clothing, not the elongated one. The shoed one had fallen, the decayed rope used to strangle him giving up after who knows how long it had been there. The body slumped, face first into the wood beneath him.

Tord inched closer, ignoring the other two corpses for now. He was afraid that it might jump up and attack him, something that was common with a lot of horror video games. He readied his knife in case it actually happened, though he knew that it wasn’t going to help him much if the corpse did end up moving. The wood groaned, and he stopped for a few seconds to ensure the gallows weren’t going to fall apart as soon as he touched them.

There was something that caught the light from the flashlight underneath the body. It was metallic, shiny, and he hoped to whatever god was listening that it was a key. Or, maybe a bobby pin or lock pick or something. Either would work. Due to the position of the body, however, it was impossible to reach unless he moved the corpse and stretched. He could also climb up onto the wooden platform, but he felt like the old thing wouldn’t be able to take his weight. It already looked dangerous enough.

He shifted his feet, turning so he could go to the side of the platform, but his feet caught on something. He frowned, looking down at the grassy floor. Laying face down in the grass was an object, most likely a plaque of some sort. He kneeled down, picking it up out of sheer curiosity. The metal had holes in the sides for screws, and it was covered with rust that rubbed off on his fingers. He flipped it over, eyes narrowing at the words written.

“ _ Wrongly accused, wrongly killed. _ ”   
  
The plaque met the ground again as he stood up, aiming his light to the front of the gallows. There  _ was  _ a spot that was a bit lighter than the rest, and it was a perfect fit for the plaque’s shape. He mentally shrugged, finding the detail interesting but trying not to dwell on it. He’d spent too much time here.

Finishing his quest to the side of the gallows, Tord reached up and shoved the corpse with his robotic hand. The grimaced and let out a quiet ‘eww’ as the body’s skin seemed to  _ crackle  _ and even stuck to his hand. He’d never seen something like that happen, but then again he’d never seen a corpse so badly decayed and charred before. He tended to stray away from fire.

The shiny metal thing was indeed a key, and he breathed a sigh of relief. With one last look at the corpses (and another shock of discomfort at the sight of them), he made his way back to the thick door. The room continued to make sounds at him, and he could hear his radio pick up static before fading again. Either there was a monster, or Patryk or Paul were trying to contact him. He hoped for the latter, hoping that they just gave up trying instead of him having to face another abomination.

Thankfully, the radio didn’t go off again, and he was safe all the way to the locked door. He did hear some weird gurgling and even a loud, almost siren-like moan. He chose to ignore them, unlocking the door with ease and stepping into the room he’d opened.

He groaned, cursing his luck for what had to have been the fiftieth time that day. Before him stretched a seemingly endless flight of stairs.

At least as he walked down these, he had something to do other than think. He was on his toes, listening for every little sound. Hissing, rushing water, and thumping reached his ears, but nothing too threatening. The walls, too, were catching his attention far more. Slowly, they changed from gross green mold covered stone brick to something more like a house’s walls. They were white, and though they showed signs of water damage, they weren’t as bad as any of the walls he’d seen thus far.

And soon, he started running into the writing on the walls.

At first, the writing was in black. It was mostly single words, but the letters were so shaky that he couldn’t make them out. The words gradually became more legible, and it occurred to him that they were all saying the same thing.

_ “Escape?” _

The memory of the hospital’s wall came to mind, and he stopped in his tracks to knock on one of the walls. Unfortunately, he didn’t find a shortcut out of the stairwell, as the walls weren’t hollow. There was actually something behind them this time. And that begged the question of, why the word was written so frequently down the steps, if there was no point to them?

When the green mold had finally disappeared from his surroundings, he found that the writings became different. They looked more like they’d been drawn with crayon, and there were no words for a while. Mostly drawings that made no sense. Scribbles made by a child, it seemed. They creeped him out, since there was no logical reason that a child would be in such a place.

He paused once again on the steps, light shining on one particular drawing of a person. It clicked in his head that these little doodles were identical to the ones he’d found in the padded room as well as the hidden room at the hospital, and were probably done by the same person. So, if his earlier assumption that  _ those  _ drawings were done by strange-Tom was correct, then  _ these  _ ones were as well.

Which meant that the strange-Tom was here somewhere, or had been here. Tord wasn’t sure if he liked that or not, since the ‘man’ (if he could call him that) seemed far too innocent for the horrors that were going on around him. At least, that was his first guess.

The rest of the descent was spent just examining the pictures on the wall. They eventually changed from scribbles and people to places, and then back to people. The child also made sure to label everyone. One was named “Tomato”, another was named “Red guy”. There was another that almost looked like the man who kept attacking Tord. His label was “Mean”.

The stairs came to an end, and he snorted at the drawing at the bottom of the steps. It might have been him, if he was crossed with a shark and started looking like a stick figure. At least the child had included his gun. His amusement faded into confusion and some sort of warmth as he read his label.

“Nice red guy”.

Oho, he was better than the original, it seemed.

He turned away from the drawing, committing it to memory since it was pretty endearing, and his eyes landed on a door. It was an average door, nothing too out of the ordinary. The only ‘strange’ thing about this door was the fact that there was a note pinned to it. He shuffled closer to read it, noting mentally that he was reading a lot of things today.

_ “To Scrib - If you read this, that means you’re safe. Good. We don’t know how much longer this place goes on for, but we’re trying to find our way out. ‘Red guy’ said that this place leads to the road, so if you can, meet us there. We’re worried about you, Scrib. Stay safe, and don’t talk to strangers.  -- Tomato” _

Huh. Well, if ‘this place’ led to a road, Tord would be happy to get through it. He opened the door, leaving the note for “Scrib” in case the person (whoever it was) managed to get to it. He wondered distantly how long the note had been there, but the thought was quickly shoved to the side. He focused more on his extremely bland surroundings, ranging from the still white walls to the somewhat clean wooden floor. It was like he’d gone back in time to the hallway that he’d run from those four-legged weirdos in.

His footsteps were loud on the floor, and he could hear his radio beginning to play static. It seemed his safe time was over, and he readied his knife. He hoped that he found a new weapon soon.

He rounded a corner, knife at the ready, and relaxed slightly. There was a monster, yes, but the floor had given way between him and said monster. If the creature wanted to eat his face, it would have to jump. And he wasn’t sure that the four legged freak-of-nature was able to do so. It walked around on the other side of the hole, feet kicking each other and dragging.

He began to laugh as two feet actually got into a fight with each other, kicking until one leg gave out and the monster fell to the floor with another one of those throaty moans. He didn’t want to think about where those were coming from, since the thing didn’t have a head or neck.

Tord dropped his guard a little, shining his light down into the hole. He winced at the sound of rushing water, and decided that maybe jumping in wasn’t the smartest idea. He then turned to the wall beside him, seeing a smaller door than what he’d been seeing previously. He could still fit through it, but his hair brushed the top of the doorframe. Odd.

The room he entered wasn’t anything spectacular. There was nothing in the room, save for a bed. Nice. As with the hospital and the prison, the sheets were filthy. This filth, however, was fresh red paint - blood. Something had been bleeding on the bed recently, and whatever it was probably wasn’t alive by the way the sheets were soaked.

He figured that it wasn’t important since he couldn’t see anything in the sheets, and he ignored it. He made his way to the door next to the bed instead, opening it slowly. Slowly was the best way to open it, it turned out, as there was another monster on the other side.

Oh, and it was his  _ favorite  _ monster. A three headed prick. He tried to sneak around it, since it was occupied with munching on something on the floor (ugh, the  _ squelching _ ), but one head turned to look at him and made a grotesque raspy noise. Tord didn’t know what to call it - perhaps an exhale, maybe? - but he didn’t dwell on it. He’d been spotted, and the monster stood up to its full height and turned to face him.

He swallowed thickly, forcing his body to move before the monster attacked him. His legs were suddenly very heavy for some reason, and he refused to believe it was because the body the monster was eating had something green mixed in with it. He  _ refused. _

The hallway was full of sharp turns, ones that he wasn’t quite sure how he managed to turn them without slamming into the wall like the monster behind him. It also seemed never ending, and he  _ swore  _ that he passed by the same pile of flesh and blood that the monster was eating about six times even though he wasn’t turning in a circle.

There were no doors, there was nothing to try. He was stuck in a never ending cycle of being chased by this one three headed monster. And he was starting to get tired from running. There was no place to hide, and the creature was gaining on him. A part of him was yelling to just give up, but he refused. He hadn’t come all this way just to be cheated this way, after all.

A small warning creak was the only thing he got before the floor collapsed underneath him, and he shouted out a curse in his native language as he fell. He hit the water, feeling the current sweep him away as he tried to surface, and he was hopeful that the monster couldn’t swim as well as glad that the rotted floor had chosen to fail. Now he just had to focus on not drowning.

While out of breath.

And tired.

The current kept sweeping him under, and there was a point where he felt a sharp pain in his leg. Not from his previous gunshot wound that was on his thigh, but the other leg’s calf began burning. He pressed through the pain, focusing more on surviving rather than hurting.

It was by a large stroke of luck that the hood of his hoodie caught onto something and stopped him from being washed away. He quickly twisted to grab what his hood was caught on, knowing that he’d slip out of it sooner rather than later. He wrapped his arms around it, trying to catch his breath as the water still tried to pull him away. Carefully, when he felt that he was able, he unhooked his hood and looked up.

Oh. He was caught on a ladder. Convenient. Maybe his luck didn’t suck too bad after all. He climbed up it, collapsing on the floor once he managed to get up to it, and prayed that this floor didn’t feel the need to break too. He noticed that this room in particular had a light, however dull and flickering it might’ve been.

He tensed up at the sound of footsteps. They weren’t monstrous footsteps, more like shoes on the wood. Like his own steps. He looked up, still trying to catch his breath, and his eyes widened.

Standing above him was an extremely tall ginger man with a look of concern. His own eyes were odd, since he had only  _ one.  _ The left eye was a void, like the kind stranger’s and Tom’s. His remaining eye was green. His clothing matched his eyes, as they were a mess of what seemed like stitched together bits of different clothes. A red and blue hoodie with a green and purple overcoat, along with pants that were half blue half black. Not even his shoes matched, as his left was gray while his right was black.

Tord sat up, just staring at the man. He winced, and his focus was forcefully moved to his leg. He hissed at the sight of his jeans being ripped, as well as a hideous bleeding cut in his skin.

“You’re hurt!” The stranger cried loudly, making him wince again. The voice was sickening, as he sounded like  _ Matt.  _ Somehow. The man wasted no time in moving him away from the hole and ladder, farther into the room. Tord was set against the wall as the stranger proceeded to run around the room. “What do I do? What do I do?!” The norwegian simply watched in awe, unable to comprehend who this man was.

“Calm down, Matt.” The stranger spoke  _ to himself,  _ and the voice was Edd’s. “The cut’s bleeding, so we gotta get rid of the blood first, right?”   
  
The man stopped running around in circles, instead dashing over to the bed in the room and grabbing the sheets. Seconds later, the sheets were in pieces and were being pressed to Tord’s injury. At least they looked clean.

The man began muttering to himself, however. “See? It’s not that hard. Just like Torm did for us when we got injured.” Again, it was Edd.   
  
“But it’s different. I’ve never done this before.” Matt.

“Neither have we, Matt. There’s a first time for everything.”  _ Tord? _

The real norwegian grabbed the ripped up sheets, pressing them to his wound so the strange man wouldn’t have to. He didn’t want to make him focus on too many things, and he had a lot of questions to ask. “Who are you?” He decided to start with the basics.

The man gave him something close to a glare. “I could ask you the same question.” It was his own voice again, and the strangeness of it made him shiver. “We’re not going to give you-”   
  
“Tomatoredd. We go by Tomatoredd.” The Tord voice was cut off by the Edd one, and the expression changed to something far more friendly. “You look like Tord, though. Is that who you are?”   
  
Tomatoredd? What an unusual name. “Who else would I be?” Tord responded, changing the scraps of the sheets when the one he was using became too soaked in blood. His bleeding had slowed, thank god. “What do you mean, Tomatoredd? That’s an... odd name.”   
  
Tomatoredd shrugged, sitting back on his legs instead of looming closer to Tord. “It’s a combination of all of our names. Tom, Matt, Tord, and Edd. It pretty much became our name after Scrib decided to start calling us Tomato. Edd felt left out.” Now, it was Tom’s voice. Just the sound of it made Tord angry, and the man took a deep breath to calm himself. “So, why are you here?”

“Looking for my soldiers. Why does it matter to you?” Tord snapped, a bit bitterly. He wasn’t in the mood for conversation, especially not with someone who reminded him of his frien-  _ ex- _ friends. He was still trying to figure out how this man existed, and his mind was coming up blank. There was no logical explanation for him, and that pissed him off more than Tom’s voice.

The amalgam blinked at him, then cocked his head. “It doesn’t. We were just curious, is all. It’s not every day we see a Tord.” Edd claimed, smiling brightly. He stood up, clearing his throat awkwardly. “I hope you find your soldiers. Especially given the weird stuff that’s been going on.”   
  
_ That  _ caught Tord’s interest. “Weird stuff?”

The stranger’s voice switched back to Tom’s. “Yeah. Monsters and shit.” He waved his hands vaguely. “They look like botched human experiments from the commie’s lab. Not fun.”   
  
“What do you mean by that, witness?” The man snapped at himself, hand becoming a fist. As much as Tord was confused by this man’s existence, he was also fascinated. It seemed like the four of them were sharing a mind, a body, and a mouth. He knew for a fact that it shouldn’t have made the stable result he saw.

Tomatoredd’s left eye narrowed, and one hand went up to his head as his void eye closed. “Guys, can we not fight? Don’t we have something more important to think about?” Matt’s voice sounded meek, shy, as well as pained. It was strange. When there was no answer, their other hand went to their head and both began rubbing small circles against their temples as though they were fighting off a headache. “Guys, please. We need to focus on Scrib. I don’t want him getting hurt.”   
  
“... Fine.” Tom huffed, dropping one hand.

“Whatever.” The copy-Tord agreed.

The man blinked, and his face colored. He laughed nervously. “Uh, sorry about that.” The Edd voice muttered. “We gotta go find our friend. Sorry to leave you while you’re injured, but... uh...”

Tord rolled his eyes and waved his robotic hand. “Go. I can do the rest myself.” He shooed the stranger away.

Tomatoredd gave him one last look and smile before shuffling over to the door. Even after he left, though, Tord could hear him shouting and arguing all the way down the hall. He blocked the sound out, directing his attention to his leg. Now that the bleeding had slowed, he should probably wrap it up.

He grabbed a couple of the longer scraps of the sheet, winding them around his leg tight enough that he could feel it, but not so tight that his circulation would be cut off. He didn’t need a tourniquet, just a bandage. The white stood out against his black pants and his now exposed skin.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, taking a moment to collect his thoughts and relax for a few minutes. He was tired, both mentally and physically. Who knew how much longer this place stretched on for? He was also confused. Who exactly was this “Tomatoredd” person? How did they exist? Who was that “Torm” person that they spoke of? And then there was the reappearance of the name “Scrib”.

Just who were all of these people? Why were they here?

He yawned, putting his hand into his pocket. His eyes snapped open and his heart leapt into his throat. Quickly, he scanned the room that he was in, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. And that was exactly what he  _ didn’t  _ want.

His flashlight was gone. His knife was in his pants pocket and had stayed put, but his main source of light had been swept away in the water. And now that he was paying attention, that radio was gone too. A trade off for him managing to catch the ladder, he guessed, and his head fell back against the wall with a dull thud.

Tord’s rest lasted for a little while, as nothing came to disturb him. Part of him didn’t really want to move, simply fall asleep here, but he knew that it was a bad idea. Sure, he couldn’t hear anything  _ now _ , but it was entirely possible that something could come in and try to kill him in his sleep. With that in mind, he stood up. His leg pulsed in pain, but he found it bearable compared to a lot of the other injuries he’d sustained in his lifetime.

He limped to the door, moving the knife into his hoodie pocket and tightening his grip around it. Outside the door, the world was dark and quiet. He stepped into the pitch blackness, closing the door behind him so his eyes would adjust quicker. He had to be more alert, now, since he had no warning system and no light to see where everything was.

He hobbled down the hall, using the wall as a guide and pausing every time the floor decided to creak. He ground his teeth together at how weak, helpless, and open he felt.

After a long period of walking straight, he tripped over a small raise in the floor and grumbled. The trip sent him away from the wall, which turned out to be a good thing as a great  _ CLANG  _ echoed in his ears. A gate had fallen in front of him, and he pressed his hand against it. A moment later, a loud whirring replaced the clang’s echo, and he felt the ground lurch beneath his feet.

He’d stumbled into an elevator, and the damn things ever only wanted to go down, it seemed.


End file.
